Dave Eggers' comedy brings a ray of sunshine into Sam Mendes' life

He has documented suburban malaise, filmed a story of soldiers during Operation Desert Storm, and followed a son avenging his father's murder. Now the director Sam Mendes is to turn his hand to comedy: he has signed up to direct the provisionally titled This Must Be the Place, a light-hearted movie about a couple on a road trip around America in search of a new home.

Mendes - who has just finished Revolutionary Road, a family drama set in the 1950s starring his wife, Kate Winslet, and her Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio - is to start work on the film in the spring. The American author Dave Eggers, best known for his hit novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, has written the script, together with his wife, the writer Vendela Vida. Casting has not yet been finalised, but the American actor John Krasinski - currently wowing viewers as the hapless paper salesman Jim Halpert in the American version of The Office - is tipped to star.

Pippa Harris, the director of Mendes' production firm Neal Street Productions, says the film will be a breath of fresh air for the director. "Sam has spent the last few years doing fairly emotionally heavyweight projects, and he felt he wanted to do something totally different, on a much smaller scale," she says. "It is an extremely funny, life-affirming film, and it landed on Sam's desk like a ray of sunshine."